THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) on Monday heard that two of the City’s four pumps are down at the moment, and that City Engineer Colvern Venture has no idea when they will be back up.

At the fortnightly statutory meeting at City Hall, Councillor Bishram Kuppen asked for an update to be provided on the working condition of the pumps, owing to the fact that two were reported down at a previous statutory meeting.
Venture stood up to say that although assuring the Mayor last Friday that the pumps are all in working condition, two pumps developed an oil leak issue during the course of Sunday night.

The Riverview koker and the JP Santos koker are the ones down at the moment and Venture disclosed that the hydraulic oil which leaked is very expensive.
“We can’t really control these things,” he said, adding that although he is not able to say when the kokers will be in working condition again, they are working to have them back up as soon as possible.

Mayor Patricia Chase-Green noted that the rainy season is here and that residents depend heavily upon these two pumps. She called for an assessment report to be presented to her by Thursday.

Councillor Kuppen said because there will always be rainfall, the City Council ought to look at acquiring more pumps. “They previously said the two pumps were out and here I am finding out again that they’re still down. But the planning here is not very good. They should have had backup pumps that you could hook up to a trailer so that if certain areas have problems, you move them there. But of the four critical pumps we have, two are not working.”

Kuppen further said that he was not satisfied with the explanation offered by the City Engineer. “A lot of times we are getting excuses here and I don’t buy in to that. We all know there are money problems in the council but the council has to have priorities, and prevention of flooding is priority.”

Town Clerk Royston King offered that while the City Engineer tried to protect himself by not offering a specific time period by which the pumps would be back up, the two pumps should be back up in another week’s time.